Google AI Overviews Reportedly Halving Website Click-Through Rates
· 4h ago · Originally reported by The Daily Tribune News
Google's AI Overviews feature, which displays AI-generated answers directly atop search results, is reportedly cutting website click-through rates by roughly 50%. The feature increasingly answers queries inline, reducing the need for users to click through to publisher or monetised pages.
Why it matters
Search arbitrage depends entirely on users clicking through to pages where search ads are displayed. If AI Overviews suppress click-through rates at scale, the volume of monetisable visits shrinks and the economics of buying traffic to earn on search-ad clicks deteriorate significantly.
Explain it like I’m new here
It's like a librarian who now answers your question at the front desk instead of walking you to the bookshelf — fewer people ever reach the shelf, so the ads posted there get seen far less.
Read the original at The Daily Tribune News
Terms in this story
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are AI-written summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results, answering the question directly with links to sources.
Click
A click is one person tapping or clicking on an ad or link and being taken to another page.
CTR (click-through rate)
CTR is the percentage of people who click something after seeing it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
Search volume
Search volume is the number of searches: either how often people look up a keyword in a search engine, or how many queries a publisher sends to its feed.
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